


so free it looks like lost to me

by Goldmonger



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Family Loss, Gen, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Cara Dune has just been left behind, again. Family is a hard thing to hold on to, particularly when the galaxy is being ripped apart by war every few decades.*(Also known as: For a series called 'Star Wars' they sure don't spend a lot of time with the war veterans who aren't Jedi, huh, let me fix that)
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune, Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 187





	so free it looks like lost to me

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song 'Lose This Skin' by The Clash.
> 
> ***
> 
> showrunners: *leave Cara behind for no reason just like JJ left Rose behind in TROS for no reason*  
> me: *materialises behind them*  
> me:  
> me:  
> me: no

Planets died all the time, a grizzled Sullustan told her one afternoon, the two of them freshly drunk with blaster bolt burns healing on their thighs and shoulders. A thousand supernovas a day, turning worlds into smears. Nothing special, when you think about it.

She sipped her drink, and lost a few minutes. When she returned to herself two of her fellow troopers had her by the upper arms, dragging her away from the same old man that had bought her a shot that tasted of jet fuel, his blood hot on her fists. _That was my smear_ , she remembered screaming, the words catching in her throat, in the sandpaper dryness left by the alcohol.

Well used to drunken outbursts from refugees as well as their own, her squadron had locked her in a cloakroom until she passed out in a pool of her own vomit, her sobs muffled by the racks of stinking coats. The music filtered under the door and lulled her to sleep, the percussion of the band like explosions – people’s faces melted into places, into scattered limbs, rubble.

A firework that illuminated the universe, she thought. A falling star, blazing bright.

Then nothing.

The Sullustan didn’t even hold her breakdown against her, grumbling something about missing family, two of his kids in the ground. He was still bruised when he died, four gaps in his teeth when a TIE turned him to mist from a hundred yards away. One of many that day, one of many more the next. Nothing special, she might have said, if the war had turned her cold too, but then she was just angry. A boiling pot sizzling everything around it black.

Shortly after they got news that some no-name desert rat had blown up the superweapon, she lay silently in the Alliance-assigned dormitories, listening to a hundred people breathing. Nights on Yavin IV were cold and windy, and the howling was unbearable then, the pained death throes of an unknown animal. In the darkness she felt around for her epaulets, her bandolier, her scuffed boots, and took note of them all: Made on Corellia; Bartered for on Batuu; Stolen off her comrade’s corpse on Eriadu, in the disastrous aftermath of a recon mission gone wrong. Smears, she thought, remembering bodies dark in the snow, voices rising as she tried not to bleed a trail.

She had eventually set down her clothes and equipment, realisation like icewater breaking over her skin. She had rejected tokens from her mother, her sister. Rejected them too, of course, the open sky a siren song to the grounded bird.

There was nothing left from Alderaan. Nothing left that mattered.

*

Years passed. Millions more died. The emperor was one of them, but he had friends. Pustules that swelled in villages under the radar, diseases disguised as men that took over continents, asteroids and planetoids. Their soldiers still wore the ghostly armour of their fallen dynasty, though, and picking them out in the night proved to be easier than expected.

Shock troopers, they called these rebels. The sudden storm. Death from above.

More years passed.

They became irrelevant too.

*

“Cara. Please get up.”

She dragged herself into consciousness, irritation surging. It was dawn outside the drop-ship. Were they landing soon? Who were they heading to kill now?

“Nobody. It’s Greef. Do you remember where you are?”

Cara sat up, groaning when the movement sent her head spinning and her stomach turning unpleasantly. The previous days and weeks hurtled back to her and she winced, scrubbing at her eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing in my room, old man.”

The aging bounty hunter was standing in the midst of her personal debris; everything from filthy shirts to blaster charges were littered across the floor, empty gas canisters and ardees bottles piled on every available surface. There were grease stains on the walls where she had tried to fix a scavenged pulse rifle, then promptly given up and thrown its various components in frustration. The entire place smelled like the worst kind of dive bar.

“Checking up on you.”

Almost on cue, there was a grunt from beside her. Cara glanced down and was mildly surprised to find a half-naked Chalactan woman looking around rather blearily at the sudden noise. She spotted Greef and pulled the sheets up towards her throat, offering him a tired grin.

“We still partying?”

“No,” said Cara, thinking she should feel worse that she didn’t recall the woman’s name. “Business time, apparently. You mind?” She nodded towards the door, and the woman shrugged, getting up. Greef tactfully averted his eyes as she dressed, and Cara took the opportunity to yank on trousers and a vest over her undershirt. She was concerned – Greef could be pushy, and had been in his first month or so of reassembling a shattered guild of scoundrels, but rarely this pushy. Normally he just grimaced if she showed up late to a council meeting or called someone a name with the sole intention of starting a fight; rarely did he follow it up with an impromptu visit. The fights here kind of started themselves, anyway.

“Ma’am,” said Greef archly, as the woman slunk past him, the door opening and closing with a distinct _whoosh_. Cara sat back in bed and dragged her assault blaster into her lap, spit-shining the barrel with what she hoped was clear warning.

“You sleep with a weapon next to your head?”

“You don’t?” She slid open the charger cartridge and checked it was full, snapping it closed a little louder than strictly necessary. “What do you want? Don’t tell me Nevarro’s finally been set on fire.”

“Without you?” he retorted, but without any of his usual grumpiness. There was even the beginning of a twinkle in his eye, which discomfited her so much that she gave up on appearing bored and sat forward.

“Seriously. What’s the deal? What’s so important that you have to barge into my house -,”

“Motel room.”

“- _whatever_ – unannounced? It’s shitty.”

Greef’s chest seemed to swell, the rest of him positively vibrating with excitement. “The Mandalorian and the child have returned.”

Cara froze, her fingers suddenly numb where they gripped the blaster.

“They’re here?” Impossible. He would have found her himself.

“I received a transmission about an hour ago. You probably did as well, though I doubt it got through that booze coma of yours -,”

“Oh, for the love of – give me a second here, would you?”

Cara slipped out of the bed, forcing herself to move casually, fluidly, like her muscles weren’t suddenly taut with anticipation. There was a swirling in her already unsettled stomach that she didn’t want to label as nerves, but it was getting harder to dismiss as her heart started to pound in tandem with it.

She poked her terminal to life and read the transcript of the matter-of-fact report from Din, timestamped as being received six hours previously. The words blurred, to her embarrassment.

“What was their ETA?”

“Couple of hours.” Greef tilted his head at her, blatantly scrutinising the way she carefully set down the blaster, noting the deliberate manner in which she strapped on the charger belt. “They’re trying to keep radio silent, though I told them there’s no imperial presence left here. Just being safe, I suppose.”

“Then I’ll see them when they get here.”

“Outside the city limits,” said Greef. “You wouldn’t escort them in, would you? I’d do it, but I have a pair of Neimoidians up my ass looking for compensation because of some upstart taking their puck -,”

Cara waved him down. “I got it. No worries.”

Greef shuffled his feet awkwardly. “Much obliged.”

He made further comments on the state of the guild and Cara’s role in it, which was negligible, though he was too polite to say. After a few moments of stilted discussion on the most ragtag of members and the trouble they were stirring up, he thanked her and departed. It was a kindness, she saw that after a few moments, Greef allowing her this reunion instead of taking it for himself.

Or perhaps ol’ tin-head’s blank stare still frightened him a bit. Betrayals were not forgiven swiftly in any culture, and the phrase ‘no honour among thieves’ didn’t seem to be circulated among Din’s people with any regularity. It was something else she’d learned from his soft responses when everyone else was asleep, the hum and occasional creaking of the ship the only indication they would at some point be interrupted. They’d talked for a long time on the way to Arvala-7, debates on pulse cannons versus AT-ATs, KX series droids versus R2 units, TIE versus X-Wing. It was puerile stuff, the arguments that kids born into the Civil War needled each other about, but the more they spoke the more they realised it wasn’t totally outside of their experience. Sniggering comments about the lag time in a Star Destroyer’s controls turned to the havoc wrought by those very ships. Calculating the losses of some battle led to recounts of their own losses, of people of every named race riddled red and burned black in the same moment, the soil churning from the impact of gigantic, inexorable, robotic feet.

Cara had held back from mentioning Alderaan, or the family atomised before they even knew there was a threat. It felt like too much. She laid out her history with her doomed squadron, the men and women that had been felled by vengeful despots, trigger-happy spice cartels, or the dregs of some Stormtrooper battalion, their armour eggshell white and splintering like the very same under her hands in her anguish. Companions shot down and ravaged was something they shared. A planet blown out of space and time was the face under her own mask. Moff Gideon had seen an end to that little non-secret, but the grief was calloused now. She had already decided no-one would be allowed to hurt her with it anymore.

Cara finished dressing slowly, not bothering to do much with her hair besides braiding most of it back. Peering in the cracked mirror over the ‘fresher sink, she could see the shadows under her eyes had only darkened, her pallid skin making the tattoo on her cheek into a brand.

She was like scrap, leftovers from the navy of the famed Rebel Alliance, something balled up and junked on a reject world with its paint job somehow still intact. What a sight she made, she thought viciously.

She swung her blaster so it rested between her shoulder blades, charges neatly clipped to her belt. There was a pistol at her thigh, another one on her calf, and in her pocket a grenade she’d swiped from a Gamorrean after laying him out for catcalling. Seemed like a fair trade.

As she left the motel she considered her options for whiling away a couple hours. The local cantina was a shithole, keeping in theme with the town itself, and on top of that she didn’t particularly want to run into anyone she’d punched in the past few weeks. It was something that was getting progressively more difficult the more time she spent here, which was keeping in theme with her too, it had to be said. Hunger was a long way off, considering her late night and fuzzy memory, so she gave up on further socialising and headed towards the gates, settling on just waiting near the docking station for her quarry. Din wouldn’t use it, but at least she’d see them coming.

The watery pink dawn was brightening to a hazy, yellow sort of day, the clouds ragged and few. At the town entrance Cara parked herself on an unused cargo crate, the town grudgingly coming to life around her. There was only one watchman on duty, his helmet inching towards his chest and jerking up again every few minutes, but she let herself similarly drift a little anyway, the heat sending buzzing insects and dust particles up her nose.

 _A real shithole you left me in, brother,_ she would tell him when they arrived, though it wasn’t the truth. She’d let them go. It was a skill the other shock troopers had tried to instil in her, somewhere between the nightmares and the dry-heaving when a wildflower on a backwater moon reminded her of her mother’s perfume.

_Can’t hold onto anything in times like these._

She had tried, fuck knows she had tried. To a fault, apparently.

*

A low rumbling awoke her, her grip automatically tightening on her blaster. A number of townspeople were pointing in the middle distance, beyond the gates; the rest were carrying on as normal, too used to cargo drops and formerly frequent imperial patrols to care about one ship. Cara got to her feet, shading her eyes from the sun as she picked out the glint of a familiar hull and the twin pinpricks of its engines firing. She couldn’t quite stop the grin from splitting her face, her lips cracking with the newness of it, her cheeks aching slightly as she idled there like an idiot. She hurried to reattach her blaster to her back before setting off at a walk, her stride long, leaving thick boot prints in the gritty sand. The lazing watchman made as though to question her, then seemed to think better of it as she stalked past him, head held high.

It was only to see better, she would have told him, but she liked looking unapproachable. It was why she carried an arsenal everywhere.

She was maybe a quarter of a mile away when she saw the ramp lower, a gleaming figure emerging cautiously with a nondescript bundle under its arm. She held up her hand and waved like she was flagging down passage at a spaceport, even hollering a little for effect. The Mandalorian’s obscured head turned sharply at the noise, then perked up upon seeing her. She imagined he was smiling at the sight. She sometimes heard the effect in his voice, but a meeting like this generally required some generosity on her part.

“Well, well, well,” she called out in greeting. “Hail the conquering heroes?”

“Hardly,” he said, a smirk definitely hiding somewhere in there. Din met her halfway with a brief but crushing hug, a faint warbling emanating from the recesses of the lump of blankets he was cradling. Once Cara had drawn back, her hand still resting on Din’s shoulder, she gently prodded the bundle.

“I really hope you remember me, little one. Fondly, this time.”

The child’s protuberant eyes appeared between the folds of the blanket, beetle-black and glistening in the sunlight. He chirped at her, his claws curving over Din’s vambraces as he wriggled closer, ears shuddering in the breeze. She warily held out a finger and he gripped it, squeezing experimentally. She withdrew it before he got any ideas, carnivorous, Jedi, or otherwise.

“You didn’t respond to my message,” said Din, as they began the trek back towards the town. “I had to ask Karga to make sure you’d actually stayed.”

“I said I was going to, right?” she said, watching the entrance gates undulate in the heat. “You pushed me off Sorgan. I was going to hunker down here properly.”

Din huffed at the implication that he was the one to drive her off the swampy planet, but wisely held his tongue. “And everything’s going okay here?”

“As well as can be expected.” She shot him a glance. “No warlords taking hold anyway, unless you count old Greef trying to make everybody get along.”

“Good. That’s good.”

They walked for another few moments, until Cara couldn’t help herself. “Not that I’m not happy to see you guys – but why are you back if you know there’s nobody to blow up?”

Din’s beskar façade gave nothing away, but his shoulders squared with tension, and adjusted the child in his arms until he was closer to his chest. “Homesick.”

Cara rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Just as you’ve rid yourself of bounty hunters, some other crowd of dipshits has decided to lay claim to the kid. You’ve come for shelter.”

Din shook his head. “It’s not that simple. The child’s people… they’re practically non-existent. I can’t even find record of their species, let alone a homeworld.”

“And?”

“And…” Din dipped his head, as though in defeat. “I’m getting worried about Jedi. We haven’t officially met any yet, but… he can sense their interest.” He lifted the child a little higher, to a series of cheerful babbles. “They’re watching.”

“They’re dead,” said Cara flatly. She could feel old hackles rising, that aura of terrible alertness to an unknown danger. “There’s maybe a handful still alive and they’re too busy to care about one baby.”

“Yeah,” Din murmured, as they passed into the town, winding between the milling inhabitants. “I sure hope so.”

They found Greef in one of the dingier cantinas, surrounded by creatures chattering in some incomprehensible clicking language that he seemed reluctant to understand. He saw them as they approached, his face brightening, and hastily batted away a being with mandibles that was agitatedly shaking a miniature holoprojector near his head.

“Mando! Dear man!” He went for a handshake, grasping Din’s gloved hand with both of his own. His gaze slid to the child and his expression turned apprehensive. “All good with – with everything? You weren’t clear when you transmitted this morning. I shouldn’t expect a fleet of imperial ships any time soon, should I?” He chuckled once, short and too loud, and waited intently for a reply.

“It’s just us,” said Din, and Greef beamed, taking his elbow and directing them to a free table a considerable distance from the one he’d just left. He barked something that sounded disparaging over his shoulder and all but shoved them into the booth, snapping his fingers at a waitress.

“Open a tab, darling, and bring me a round of my usual. This is the reunion of friends!”

The Ferroan woman glared at his presumption, but glided away to place the order. Cara stretched her arm over the back of the seat, fully engrossed in watching Din. He seemed unharmed, barely a tear in his under-armour, let alone the beskar, but he was twitchy. She was used to being the only one that needed to be facing the door of any establishment, but now he checked up on it too, almost as much as he did on the child. Greef was nattering away about some deal he’d made with smugglers in the Core when she beckoned him closer, lips pursed.

“What are you afraid of?”

The child was cooing, reaching for her as she leaned in, and Din had to set him back on the seat. His reply was reluctant. “What do you mean?”

“Save the banthashit. I know that look. What is it?”

Din rubbed his wrist absently, and for the first time Cara saw a brace there; small, almost indiscernible beneath the armour, but still the result of either a close-quarters battle or him slipping in the tub. He didn’t seem the type to take long soaks.

“Paranoia, I hope. We were being tracked by a Togruta with abilities like the kid. Almost as soon as we cleared this system, actually.” He folded his arms, hid the brace from her sight. She resolved to take a look at it later anyway. “We lost her, but it took a while. I’m just on my toes, is all.”

Cara felt the walls close around them, the air suddenly thin. “She wanted to take him?”

“I don’t know,” he said grimly. “She just seemed surprised by us more than anything, wanted to get to know us, but…”

“You’ve been burned one too many times to just trust like that,” Cara finished for him. Din nodded. “You did the right thing.”

“I came back to get supplies, to figure out our next move,” he said. “We’re no closer or further from his mystery race so I figured it was probably worth it. To see familiar faces.”

Cara considered him, mirroring his ostensibly relaxed position, really mimicking the coiled readiness that lurked beneath the lounging exterior. “And you wanted to brag about defeating a Jedi.”

“She let us go. Hardly a victory.”

“And your wrist?”

His reproach was subtle, but she sensed it anyway. “Tried to fire on her ship. Quickly got the idea she wasn’t on board with that.”

“Impressive.” Cara snagged one of the glasses on the platter set down by the returning waitress, downing the clear liquid in one swallow. It seared her oesophagus the whole way down, though not as much as it would have a few years ago. For her this was a typical breakfast, and she needed to take the edge off.

When she looked up again, Din’s helmet had stooped nearer, the flat black visor an impenetrable depth. “Actually missed you, you know,” he said. “We both did.” The child trilled, swatting at the air like he wanted to be lifted.

“Yeah, well,” she muttered, busying herself with the whorls in the durasteel alloy table. “Me too, I suppose.” She ran a hand through her hair, wondering fruitlessly how a man with no face could make her want to avoid his gaze. Seeking another subject, lest she fall into the trap of revealing her skittish heart, she reached out and tickled the underside of the child’s wispy chin. “No name yet, then?”

“He’s fifty. If he doesn’t have a name by now I think we should wait until he makes one for himself.”

“Ever the deflector, Mr Mandalorian.”

She couldn’t see his withering look, but she knew it was there. “He knows when I’m talking to him. That’ll do for now.”

Cara wanted to cackle, to rip into him more and listen to the wry wit, feel the warm shoulder next to hers, but he wasn’t a fellow soldier. He wasn’t in her squadron, watching her back. They were a clan of two, the Armourer had pronounced, a family making its own destiny, and she was their occasional backup. Scrap, used and discarded, all she was good for.

_Can’t hold on to anything._

Greef was still processing the news of the Jedi woman. “I don’t know what to say,” he said uncertainly, picking up a glass and putting it back down with a mumble. “Talk of Jedi… it would have been unthinkable less than a decade ago…”

He meandered into idle repetitions of the kind of superstitious myths that had been bandied about for millennia, of wizards with wands of lightning and spells that could enslave entire worlds. Cara saw the child reaching for a fork and tried to wrestle free of the miserable cloud that had enveloped her more than a month ago, playfully nudging it closer to him. He started chewing on the end of it, leaving tiny imprints of his pointed little teeth and slaver that dribbled onto the rubber upholstery. She went to exchange an amused look with Din, only to see him staring over her shoulder, stiff as a board with his hand hovering by his hip. She turned and swore, colourfully.

A pack of bounty hunters was heading right for them, mixed races, but predominantly human. Greef, who was sitting by the wall, like Din, hadn’t even registered their presence yet.

“…and they all wore robes, you know, seems impractical with a laser sword but then, what do I know -,”

Cara dug her elbow in his side with all the urgency she could muster, and when he coughed indignantly she pointed at the gang coming towards them. “Friends of yours?”

“They cheated those Neimoidians,” he groaned, casting around for an exit, but Cara was blocking the way out of their side of the booth. “They hate the new rules I established for this place, say there aren’t enough pucks to go around -,”

“Karga,” the leader of the group boomed, suddenly on top of them, looming over the table with half a dozen similarly dressed men and women snorting and spitting behind him. He was garbed in clothes that had seen hard times, and judging by the lacerations on his face and arms, as well as the multi-coloured blood matting his limp hair, he’d seen them too.

“Rhato,” said Greef weakly, straightening up and trying to appear authoritative. The effect was almost sad. “I told you I’d get those two -,”

“The Seppie fucks are dead,” Rhato rasped, studying each one of them. There was intelligence behind that mean, simian brow, Cara was sure of it, and she didn’t like the way his gaze lingered on her tattoos, or the child, or the beskar helmet for that matter. “Dumped them in the alley. Whatever they had set up is ours now.”

Greef spluttered a little, and in her periphery Cara saw customers begin to trickle out the door, wait staff included. The cantina was ramshackle as all hell, even for Nevarro, but it still had a protocol in place for industry squabbles.

“That is not how this system works,” Greef said, voice breaking in his impotent anger, and Rhato laughed nastily.

“Your system isn’t in place anymore. My crew and I are taking over the guild. Came to offer you a chance to leave peacefully.” He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Din, or his awkwardly positioned arm, angled under the table. “Unless you make this a problem.”

“The guild is his deal,” said Cara, gesturing to Greef and taking up a ready stance, leaning over the table. “You don’t like it? Find a new line of work.” She appraised his wounds and the dirt that seemed to have been grouted into his joints. “Maybe you’ll find a job you’re better at. You seem to like rolling in shit, and I hear the nearest bantha farm is only a couple miles out -,”

She was waiting for the strike, and when it came it made her muscles unfurl like a lashing snake, all that nervous energy released in one burst. She grabbed his fist out of mid-air, threw it to the side and head-butted him, right in the nose. Blood spurted from it like an arterial spray, splattering her forehead and sending him reeling backwards into his companions. She could taste it on her teeth, and realised she was laughing, all desire to reach for her blaster evaporating on the spot.

“Fucking kill her!” he roared at them, and blasters were raised, a line of little black pistols sighting her alone. She crouched low and was about to jump them when there was a rushing sound, like water, and a flare of orange from her left. She turned away instinctively, flame engulfing the pack of hunters with a belch of smoke and radiant heat, singeing the hairs on her arms and leaving traces of soot on her clothes. She swung back to see Din engaged with one of the remaining men, most of the others having fled with fire eating its way up their legs and hair. One of the stragglers was lunging for Cara, screeching blue murder and scarlet from the effect of the flames.

“You’re fucking dead!”

“That’s not very nice,” she said giddily, dodging his attempt at a smelly bear-hug and kneeing him in the belly, grabbing and twisting his arm until she heard a satisfactory _pop_. The resulting yell of pain was just a bonus.

There wasn’t enough room for her signature suplex, so she kicked out a kneecap and delivered a swift uppercut that had him sprawling on the floor in seconds, his jaw crooked. She barely had time to revel in the adrenaline, as almost instantly there was a shout from behind her – she switched her attention to the others, to where Greef was still cowering in the booth, the child nestled in the folds of his robes. He was aggravated, squawking pitifully at the scene before them, and Cara could see why.

Din was pinned to the wall, blaster burns peppering the plaster beside his head as Rhato struggled to aim it in that general direction. Din was holding him off successfully, it seemed, until Rhato hooked a leg around his ankle and unbalanced him. The blaster barrel was an inch from the vertical visor of his helmet when he dropped the target to Din’s unprotected throat instead.

Cara saw red. Blood red.

The cantina fizzled away and she was presented with a replay of a nightmare that had once woken her every night, a grisly alarm clear as a bell: a mission during her first year after the Battle of Endor, clearing out the ex-Imps that had fled to the Outer Rim to escape trial. Her squadron was deployed to apprehend a particular former officer, who had enslaved the locals of some forested moon and was enforcing his rule with a ragged band of Stormtroopers. A rebel agent, codename ‘Fulcrum’, had told them to expect maybe a few dozen hostiles.

It was a becalmed Destroyer, with almost a thousand soldiers still living. The massacre had been quick, at least, and as she ran she saw shock troopers in pieces, heard the distant cries of the dying, was forced to abandon her partner of several weeks with holes in her chest, her eyelids still fluttering. She had screamed her name, though it was torn away by the wind.

 _Bad intel_ , they would tell her after, along with the other four survivors. _We’ll know more next time._

_There is no next time because Din has blood coming out of his ear that means his skull is punctured his brain will swell he will not make it through the sewers he cannot walk -_

_They’ll get him too -_

_They’ll get everyone eventually –_

Cara seemed to be moving slowly, as though underwater. She pushed Rhato’s elbow so that the blaster bolt hit the wall again, further up this time. She wound her fingers into the back of his grimy jerkin and yanked him backwards, away from Din and into her personal, very private space. One fist to the jaw, like his friend, the cracking of fragile glass, and one to the temple, just for him. She avoided his blows easily, the entire universe whittled down to a single enemy – a lone flailing man, sweating and crazed with fury.

He was the Empire, she thought, sucker-punching him, the air vacating his lungs with a wheeze. He was Grand Moff Tarkin, and she tore him back by the hair, exposing his Adam’s apple so she could chop at it with the edge of her hand, his gasp breaking off into a gurgle. He was those pathetic, no-name warlords, eking out a terrorist’s living, earning a dislocated knee, a xylophone of broken ribs, a collapsed orbital socket. He was the goliath droids on Hoth, he was Moff Gideon, he was every cowardly rat that had helped build the Death Star and turned her world into a constellation of gore.

She felt pressure around her waist and struck out, flecks of blood hitting the walls, Din’s armour – and it was Din, she realised, dragging her away, saying something important, but there was a white noise overriding everything but the sound of a woman crying - laser bolts hitting flesh - the sickening smell of illness ripping through barracks – orphans, widows, the nameless with lost children -

Din was cradling her, his hand in her hair, his helmet chilling her skin where it pressed against her cheekbone.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

They stayed there, his voice constant, soothing, like she was one of Kuiil’s boisterous, ill-fated steeds, and she barely noticed the small claws, curling carefully over her forearm. The bruises darkening her knuckles faded, a retreating storm front.

She imagined asking, selfishly, if that trick worked on memories too.

*

A fellow bounty hunter had turned the Neimoidians over to the renegade members, Greef learned, under some pretence of reconciliation. She was amazed she got away with it, right under the guild leader’s nose.

Greef could be a hard man, Cara knew, but the rage that flared when he recounted this to both her and Din still surprised her. She had managed to forget that he was the one to originally sell Din and the child down the river for going against the bounty hunters’ ethos.

“In any case, they won’t be missed,” Greef said, hands on his hips, plainly distracted. “Other members came forward, talking about Rhato’s other breaches in etiquette while in the field. Killing bounties when they could have been brought in alive, torture, all sorts of awful nonsense.”

“The guild was broken,” said Din. “It’s going to take a lot of time and effort to remake it into something functional again. After all, Coruscant wasn’t built in a day.”

Cara was perched on the edge of the ship’s ramp, trying to look busy by needlessly cleaning her blaster. She’d spent the morning just lurking and being sullen, but couldn’t quite help the snort that erupted at this uncharacteristic optimism. Greef gave her a tentative smile, and Din’s stance relaxed as the child, ever sensitive to their moods, waddled from where he was chewing on the rim of his boot right up to her. She held out an arm and he latched onto it, squealing as she lifted him onto the ramp beside her.

“Thanks for letting us know. We have another day to refuel, then we’ll be on our way.”

“I hope you’ll drop by before you go?”

“Of course.” They clasped hands, and separated with amiable well-wishes. Cara waited for Din to return to the mouth of the ship, watching Greef recede into the hot, dusty afternoon. The town was grey and dull even in the harshest sunlight, with the sand and sere grass gold, but not much else. She didn’t want to be uncharitable, though. There were truly barren places, and this one barely ranked.

“He’ll be fine,” said Din, pausing next to her. He had repairs to make, inventory to catalogue, probably naptime to supervise. He nevertheless stayed, patting her shoulder hesitantly.

“How about you?”

“I’m good,” she lied, dragging her fingers through scraggly hair, fully aware of the grey tinge to her complexion and the bags under her eyes. She had slept on the ship the night before, no longer hyperventilating after Din had talked her back to reality on the cantina floor. The child was inexplicably by her side the entire night, immobile and snoring softly every time she woke. It hadn’t been peaceful, exactly, but it was better than being curled up in her motel room’s refresher, water cascading over her head as she fought to remain lucid. Even alcohol didn’t provide the kind of instant relief that just waking and seeing Din did, his form silent as he held up a cup of caf, the child eagerly crawling up his back. So she wasn’t good, really, but she wasn’t at her worst, either. That was something. She nodded to him.

“Don’t think I actually thanked you for yesterday. Made myself look a real rookie, wet behind the ears type -,”

“Don’t do that,” Din said tiredly, relenting and taking a seat next to her. “You think that’s the first time I’ve seen a comrade lose themselves in the heat of battle?”

“It’s different when you’re a soldier,” she said quietly. “When not just your fellow soldiers depend on you, but an entire cause. You can’t lose it. Yourself. Anything.”

Din’s palm brushed over his visor, an aborted movement, and Cara wondered if he missed the tiny minutiae of human behaviour – the things nobody thinks about, like pinching the bridge of your nose in frustration, or scratching an itch. He sighed. “Battle shock, we called it. Survivors of the Purge and the Siege of Mandalore spoke about it often - men and women who called out for dead friends in the night, who couldn’t bear loud noises or even the sight of violence. We tried to care for them, but…”

“The Clone Wars turned into imperial resistance, which turned into the Galactic Civil War, which ran them into early graves?” she suggested, goosebumps breaking out over her exposed arms and neck.

“Yes. They needed rest, but a war demands everything from those caught up in it. Fighters or no.”

Cara watched the child clamber down from the ramp, hopping excitedly after some vaguely reptilian creature scuttling through the scrub grass.

“I feel weak,” she confessed, tilting her chin up to dodge Din’s scrutiny, as well as keeping the stinging tears where they belonged. She could see the sky here, a deep, unpolluted blue directly overhead, free of ships or clouds or stars. “The fight isn’t over. I need to be able to protect y – to protect other people,” she amended hastily. Din seemed not to have noticed, so she ploughed ahead. “It’s the only thing I ever saw myself doing – dying for, even. I was okay with that.”

“I understand,” he said. “Staying useful is why I’m still here, not retired with a vault full of beskar.”

The child pounced on the lizard, trying to bite it as it wriggled. It would have been facile to say he was oblivious to them though, Cara knew that much now. His ears were aloft, his massive eyes flicking back to them every few moments. His body may have been feeble, but there was no mistaking the intent lurking beneath his awkward gait, the fierce possessiveness that coloured every interaction he had with Din. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so desperately sad, she thought to herself. A trio of protectors, each one thinking themselves the bulwark against the evil of the galaxy and beyond.

“My family died on Alderaan,” she said, more to herself than anything. An admission, an absolution, a weight removed. She inhaled the cooling air, the dry scent of an unspoiled planet.

“I had a mother still living, and a sister. My father died when I was very young, while on a transport that was shot down by the Confederacy. One of many retaliatory acts for Bail Organa’s affiliations.” She wiped her eyes. “When the planet was destroyed, I was already in training with the Alliance. I wanted to be a part of the rebellion, the people fighting back, the heroes we all heard about that stood up for the downtrodden. Ironically, my mother thought I was chasing danger. It would have come to me anyway.”

“Generational trouble,” said Din. “I suppose I can relate.”

“That would have been enough,” she said, “but then I was a part of the war – I couldn’t leave, not my friends, not the vendetta against the fucks who committed genocides with the press of a button. I saw so many die. So many. Most of them for nothing, for some petty fool who hid a grenade, a pair of bucket-heads refusing to give up their pilfered AT-ST, a suicide run by a war criminal on a damn speeder, of all things. Endless cruelty, lakes of blood. And it’s never going to be over.”

Din suddenly grabbed her hand where it was clenched on her thigh, her nails digging in as though it was the emperor’s throat.

“You can’t think like that. Trust me. _Hey_ ,” he dipped his head into her field of vision, waiting until she looked at him. “Trust me. That shit will kill you just as sure as one of their pulse cannons will.”

“It’s just hard.” Tears were dripping freely now, into her lap where their hands were still entwined. It was like being tethered, saved, from floating away. “Hard not to see the horror all the time.”

They stayed like that for a while, the arid breeze calming to barely a whisper as the sun sank into the hills. The child had returned from his walkabout by then, strangely subdued. He took advantage of Din’s stretched out leg to climb up and huddle between them, trilling gently.

Eventually, Cara took back her hand and rubbed away the tear tracks, her breathing unsteady. “I won’t stop fighting,” she said to the open sky. “Not for any noble purpose, though. It’s the only thing I can do, so I will do it.”

“I’d expect no less,” said Din lightly, leaning back on his palms. “I’ve found it helps, to give yourself over to something – a cause, a code, a – a person. Something you know is worth it. The complicated stuff, figuring yourself out… it can come later. If it comes at all. If you need it to.”

“Makes sense,” she said, the pit still yawning in her gut. “You’ve got a family again. A real one, I mean, not whatever those bounty hunters claimed to be. The Mandalorian armourer, she – she said you have your own clan, now. You’re a father.”

A long pause. Then: “She did say that.”

Cara tried not to turn to the sky again, conscious of the fact that she’d used up her annual quota of tears. Any more would be an overwhelming humiliation, even if it didn’t feel like it right now.

“So you have your responsibility. When are you leaving?” She worked to keep the bitterness from her tone, dread pooling in that gaping pit. Din was closer again, sitting up and at her right. Her cover.

“You mean when are _we_ leaving.”

“I don’t -,”

“Why would you stay?” he asked, almost pleaded. He got up, paced in front of the ship so briskly that he kicked up tiny clouds of dust. “What’s here? Greef’s business? A slow death, like on Sorgan?”

“I’ll have you know, I was - retired -,”

“And you helped me the moment I asked. Same with the child.” He was gripping his helmet again, like he longed to cast it off and pull at what must have been hanks of hair. “You want to be useful. You want somewhere to put the terrible things you’ve seen. With me – with us, you will always have a place.”

Cara could feel the hope swirling within, devastating in its potency. The future was rotting, junked, pointlessly brawling, or it was wreathed in a pair of foundling warriors. There was no choice, not for her, but the pronouncement of Din’s countrywoman stuck around like a bad smell.

“But you’re a clan of two. She _said_ it.” The truth burned. “Your duty is to him, not to me. I’m not – I’m not part of anything anymore.”

The child, fed up with being excluded from the conversation, hefted himself into Cara’s lap and ducked his little head inside his tunic so only his ears were visible. He had taken up a few of her fingers in his claws and was pressing them to his chest, where she could feel his unusually rapid heartbeat.

“Clans grow,” said Din, almost peevishly. “The bigger it is the more protected it is. The stronger the name.”

“I’m not calling myself a Djarin, nerf-head,” she said automatically, and had to pick her jaw up off the ground when Din, of all people, started chortling.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Does that mean we are all in accord?”

The child trilled again, wriggling even further into her abdomen, and Din proffered his hand with the most pompous formality. “Well, that settles it. I Din Djarin, and he, the child, do officially induct you to our clan of -,”

She had all three of them in a crushing embrace in seconds, the child spared the worst of the squeezing by virtue of his position between their most important organs. He cooed like a preening bird the entire time, so Cara didn’t worry too much about them inadvertently smothering him.

When they drew back, she was grinning, and steadfastly refusing to break her quota. It came close, though.

“Does this mean I get to see what’s under the tin hat?” she asked, reaching up and knocking on it like she was checking to see if it was hollow. He flipped her an obscene hand gesture that she flicked away.

“If you ever do see, it’s very bad news for one of us.”

“I wouldn’t defile your corpse, buddy.”

“I’m rolling my eyes right now. Right up into another solar system.”

“Such theatrics,” she said, not bothering to temper the hope that had now bloomed into a nervous acknowledgment of genuine possibility. She nudged one arm into Din’s side, the other cradling the child. It would have been easy, then, to clamp down on the past few days, to shove it all back like stinking trash she’d never take out; she’d done it so many times. She couldn’t break in combat, so she didn’t break, ever. Until she did, of course.

Maybe she could start taking out the trash now, piece by piece. There was a difference, she thought, as they ascended the ramp together, between keeping your body alive and keeping yourself alive. You couldn’t do the latter on your own.

They had work to do, she knew, before taking off tomorrow. Supplies to accrue, goodbyes to make, systems to scan for a lost civilisation. She could be necessary for all of this, she realised. Not a forgotten soldier or a meagre remnant of something greater, but an integral link.

Part of a clan.

_A clan of three._

**Author's Note:**

> * Armourer imma let you finish but not really, Cara is baby yoda's mom I just made it canon
> 
> *yeah I want to see Ahsoka in this show and I will manifest that if I must WHAT ABOUT IT
> 
> * i love comments! almost as much as Cara Dune and Cara Dune's biceps  
> Edit: you guys are so sweet, thank you so much :')


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